Senator STENNIS. All right, Senator Case? Senator CASE. Fort Ord, Calif., 500 units. Fort Ord is not any Johnny-come-lately in Army installations. Why do you need 500 additional units of Capehart housing at Fort Ord? General SEEMAN. 500 units is just the current increment. Actually there is an outstanding deficiency there of a total of 1,511 units, sir. Senator CASE. On what basis? I noticed in your testimony there you gave some figures on the total deficiency. What was that, 88,000? Was that all continental United States, Zone of the Interior? General SEEMAN. No, sir, worldwide. However, we build Capeharts, sir, in the continental United States, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Panama. Senator CASE. And this 88,000 referred to are Capehart? General SEEMAN. Well, it is worldwide and would include all requirements no matter what we filled it with. Senator CASE. But the area where you might build Capehart? General SEEMAN. Yes, our gross worldwide family housing requirement for the Army amounts to 261,800 units. Our current assets are 173,800-odd consisting of 165,000 in being or under construction, and 9,000-plus authorized but not under construction. Now in our existing assets, we include what we call adequate community support. That is where we have surveyed all the adjacent areas, and this is privately owned housing. We do not build where there is adequate community support. Senator CASE. Do you assume that there will be no further private building in these communities? General SEEMAN. No, we do not. This is also covered by a separate survey which FHA makes in the areas. Senator CASE. What size Army is this 261,800 units requirement based upon? General SEEMAN. Colonel McCarty? Colonel MCCARTY. 870,000-man Army, sir. Senator CASE. 870,000. If there were any change in that Army authorized strength, either upward or downward, it would affect this figure then. Colonel MCCARTY. That is correct. General SEEMAN. It would affect our deficiency figure but not our authority figure. There is such a wide cushion in there; we are not near it at all. Senator CASE. Let's go back to these individual units, and I started at the bottom for Fort Ord, Calif., 500 units, and you started to give me the specific figures there. General SEEMAN. At Fort Ord, we have a requirement for the permanent operation of 8,193 units. The existing assets of 4,161, which includes adequate community support in the area of 1,154 units, this is private rental housing, 1,231 Capehart units, and 1,776 public quarters. We add these together and take them from the total requirements, and we still have a deficiency of around 4,000 units. Senator CASE. How large is the supporting community there in terms of population? General SEEMAN. This is near the Monterey area, which is not a highly metropolitan area, and it is a very scattered and smaller community. Senator CASE. And 1,154 units is all you expect the community to provide? General SEEMAN. This is all that is presently-we survey this from time to time, and all the various rental units in the area, the units that various Army families are in and renting now. Senator CASE. And the Monterey Chamber of Commerce doesn't indicate that there is any more private housing likely to be supplied. General SEEMAN. I believe the local authorities have supported this request. Colonel MCCARTY. That is correct. Senator CASE. All right. Fort Lewis, Wash., 500 units. Fort Lewis is certainly not a new installation. What is the requirement there? What is the amount of local community support that you find? I General SEEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I must confess a gross error. gave you the figures for Fort Lewis. But essentially the same pattern applies to Ford Ord. We will reverse this in the record, but I will give you the figures for Fort Ord now. The total permanent requirement is 5,964. The community support in the area around Fort Ord is 1,790 units. There are 1,089 Capehart units, 74 public quarters, and 1,000 Wherry units there, totaling assets in existing inventory of 3,953. There is a prior Capehart authorization outstanding of 500, which brings us down to a net deficiency of 1,511. You can see the pattern around our large posts is very similar. Senator CASE. Mr. Chairman, at one time didn't we have sort of a rule of thumb figure of 55 percent? Senator STENNIS. That is correct, yes. General SEEMAN. Sir, the Department of Defense uses a rule of thumb figure that not more than 55 percent of the required housing shall be built on post. This, too, is another safety valve to avoid any possibility of overbuilding. Senator CASE. Aren't you exceeding that under this picture if you get these additional units? Colonel MCCARTY. Senator Case, at Fort Lewis with the additional 500 units would bring us up to 42.8 percent on post. Senator CASE. What about Fort Ord? Colonel MCCARTY. At Fort Ord the facilities would be 53 percent. Senator CASE. All right, what about Fort Sill? That also is not a spring chicken among installations. Colonel MCCARTY. Fort Sill has very few houses on post. With these additional 350 units it would bring on-post housing up to 29.9 percent. Senator CASE. What about Fort Rucker, Ala., 498 units requested? Senator STENNIS. Senator Case, while he is looking for that, let me ask is that on the current strength or projected strength, this percentage basis? Colonel MCCARTY. That is on projected strength. Senator CASE. Within the 870,000? Colonel MCCARTY. Yes, at Fort Rucker the percentage would be 44.2 percent. Senator CASE. Do they have a little sharper pencil down at Fort Rucker than they do at these other places? I notice that Fort Camp bell, Fort Lewis, Fort Ord are all down for 500 units but Fort Rucker, 498. Did you shortchange them two down there? Colonel MCCARTY. No, sir. I will explain it this way. At Fort Ord and Fort Lewis and Fort Sill we have a much larger outstanding requirement, whereas at Fort Rucker the 498 units will more nearly satisfy our requirement. Senator CASE. It is just amusing in going down the list to severa) 500's and then you come to one place where it is 498. Colonel MCCARTY. I might say that the maximum we could request at any station this year was 500 units. We decided that was the largest increment at any one time we would submit. Senator CASE. Supposing you give us the percentage these requested units in all of these will provide? Colonel MCCARTY. Yes, sir. Senator CASE. If you don't want to take the time here, give us a little statement on that. Pull it all together on all of these others. What is the total amount that you estimate is required within this 55-percent rule, how much do you have in military housing, how much do you have in existing Capehart housing, how much in outstanding Capehart authorizations not yet constructed over any other way that may be supplied, and how much in the community, and what percentage of your requirement will be supplied? Give us that for all of these units? General SEEMAN. We will be very happy to. We feel that we are most conservative in avoiding overbuilding and in requesting the housing for our people. Senator CASE. Mr. Chairman, I am not singling out any particular unit, but I just want to determine what the facts are, and to find out why in particular with forts of long standing we happen to have this little group of requests. That is all. (The following information was supplied :) Capehart housing data-Military housing Under construction. 7 856 units under construction. Includes requ.rements of Presidio of Monterey. 9500 units authorized. 10 Includes requirements of Fort Brooke. Senator STENNIS. Thank you, Senator. General, we look to you with a great deal of confidence to guide us with reference to these matters on housing and others. The General Accounting Office has called attention of this committee to the fact that in several instances the Air Force is constructing housing for upper grade officers on the Capehart program which averaged 30 percent more than the amount specified in the act. not calling on you to answer for the Air Force, but what about the Army? I don't know that they have made any charges in connection with your program, but the idea was that the Air Force was putting money into the higher ranking officers' quarters at the expense of the lower rank or the enlisted personnel. Have you had any complication of that kind? General SEEMAN. No, sir, I don't know of any case where such a comment has been made. I do know that the proportions of the various type housing are subject to a decision by the appropriate commanders and programing people. As you know, it is much the same as MCA. There are no limitations in the Capehart Act for the various ranks and grades and so forth. The $16,500 is an overall average. Now within that average you can vary between colonels' quarters, field officers' quarters, company officers' quarters, and in NCO quarters. In addition, you can vary between 2, 3, and 4 bedrooms, because NCO's have large families just like some of our officers. So as long as we keep within that average limitation, not only the $16,500 for the housing within the mortgage boundaries, but the average of a thousand dollars or so for the utilities support, this is our guide. Senator STENNIS. I want to tell you now that we will call on you later to help us work out some language here with reference to a formula that will be spelled out in the law. We are going to consider that. We will need your help on it. In the meantime I think if you would file with us a statement here of all the projects that you have, how many are going to be of the upper grade officer rank and how many of what I believe you call junior officers, majors and below, and how many for the enlisted men, just spell it out right on the line, speaking for the Army now. General SEEMAN. At the present stage of planning I doubt whether we would have this breakdown. Senator STENNIS. Let's get it. General SEEMAN. Because until the Congress authorizes the overall line item we do not go into advance planning quite so far. Senator STENNIS. Let's see if we can't start it, because we may take the position that until you do that planning we won't authorize it. You may have the cart before the horse, you see. We don't want to move too quickly. General SEEMAN. Do we have that breakdown now, Colonel McCarty? Colonel MCCARTY. No, sir. I have the breakdown between officers and NCO's, Mr.Chairman. Senator STENNIS. Let's break it down. I tell you it is a reflection on this committee if there is any element of correctness in this charge about 30 percent over plus, it is a reflection on this committee that the Senate depends on to look into these matters and make a recommendation. The entire Senate can't go into this. The Appropriations Committee can't examine every item. This committee is the one that is selected. I think we are going to have to take a new look and make a new start, gentlemen, in trying to write some language. I am not making any accustations against the Army. But that is a request. Is that agreeable to the committee now? That we request specifically that they file a bill of particulars here to this committee as to these 3,000 units or whatever it is. Classify them as to how many are going to be senior officers, how many are going to be junior officers and how many are going to be enlisted men? General SEEMAN. We will provide the best information we have. It is generally broken down according to the strength at the various stations. School stations will have a higher proportion of high ranking noncoms, where a troop station like Fort Lewis would have a lower proportion. (The following was subsequently submitted:) Planning composition of Capehart housing program Senator STENNIS. You mean where you are sending your men to school? General SEEMAN. Yes, they will have a higher proportion of quar ters. Senator STENNIS. From what we learned here Saturday, I think we are going to have to have a statute on this myself, at least going further than we do now. I don't know that the statute would just spell it out all the way. You must have some discretion. General SEEMAN. We follow the statutory guidelines on the square footage limitations which are prescribed for the MCA, appropriated fund housing. I can specifically say that. I know of no cases where we have not been within those requirements, and within the $16,500 average limitation. Senator CASE. I know, but it gets a good deal of elasticity when you are building in areas that have different requirements as far as airconditioning or heating? General SEEMAN. This is the same thing as we find in civilian life. Livability in certain parts of the country, I am sure that in Texas we 54781-60 -8 |